Unsure about what the Bechdel Test is, and why a film club would be based around it? Well, think about the last time you saw a film which featured the following:

1. It had two [named] women in it

2. Who talk to each other

3. About something that isn’t a man

You'll probably struggle, such is the dominant ideology of mainstream cinema! Films that pass the Bechdel Test need to fulfil the three criterion above. Archivist and club founder Lucy Smee's Bechdel Test Film Club aims to show how filmmakers have managed this too-rare feat via monthly screenings of a wide range of female-centric films, as well as films that show other underrepresented groups like LGBQT people and ethnic minorities.

This month sees the club screening ITTY BITTY TITTY COMMITTEE, described as: "a feminist, lesbian comedy directed by Jamie Babbit (who directed But I’m a Cheerleader, shown back in May).It’s the story of Anna, who’s going through a low patch after being dumped by her girlfriend and rejected by her college. When she meets Sadie and is invited to join Clits in Action, a radical Third-wave feminist group, she gets in touch with her political side and falls in love."

About the Bechdel Test Film Club, from founder Lucy Smee:

Free, monthly (usually the last Monday of the month, 7.30pm) film club Upstairs at the Amersham Arms in New Cross. We show films that pass the Bechdel Test. To pass, a film must:

1. Have two [named] women in it2. Who talk to each other3. About something that isn’t a man

The test isn’t about how good or bad a film is (good films pass; bad films pass), but rather it exists because of the large number of negative results it gets, ie by existing, it comments on the fact that so many films don’t have women talking to each other in a normal way.

I started the club in June 2013 as I just got sick of it all one day, and wanted to start a sort of refuge from modern media. I try to show a wide range of films, both in terms of date and theme, as well as films that show other underrepresented groups eg LGBQT people and people of colour.

The club started in summer 2013 and has a nice group of regulars so please come along! As well as this website, I also create events for each screening at our facebook page.

About Lucy Smee:I’m a film archivist by day (which explains why I sometimes find it hard to show films made after 1970) at a news film archive, and have previously worked at the BFI, BBC, Wellcome Library, London Screen Archives and Amnesty International. You can find me at @dearoldsmee and @holdfastmag. As well as running the Bechdel Test Film Club, I also co-edit Holdfast Magazine, a free online magazine about speculative fiction, and run Home Movie Day London, an annual event kindly hosted by the Cinema Museum in Kennington, to which people bring their home movies (on film) for free examination and projection.